Wednesday, June 06, 2012

Mrs. TANBI and I were recently in Denver for a wedding. On the last day, before we made the trek out to the airport we visited the Denver Art Museum.
I have to say this is one of the coolest buildings I had seen in quite some time. At first glance I couldn't figure out how there were going to get any exhibition space.

It certainly isn't conventional.

But unconventional makes for some truly special gallery spaces. I would never have thought that such odd spacial configurations would be so interesting, but they absolutely are.

The curator/designers have pretty free reign to subdivide the spaces, decide to present things true to the wall or true to the world, and how much space to use for art and how mach space to just leave. It must be fascinating to plan.

It's not just the gallery spaces that are compelling, the circulation spaces are just as impressive.

All the different planes and the lighting and the levels are just wonderful. It almost seems like the space should be an architecture museum. In one of the nooks they created a space for visitor feedback and some kid had filled out a card that said "the museum itself is art." Bullseye.

One of the floors has an outdoor space as well.

There wasn't anything on display when we were there, but just like inside the space is compelling even without art on display.

Even nicer with something to look at in the background.

We did see some art pieces we liked. Mrs. TANBI was particularly fond of a piece by Vance Kirkland:

I was intrigued by a piece by Lia Cook:

The Kirkland piece is all dots. Mrs. TANBI loves dots. The Cook is a tapestry done like ASCII art, or really more like a newspaper photo. It really changes character when you get closer. Probably not a great piece to own if you have cats though :-(

One piece gave me a chance to use a new panorama function on my phone camera (I had of course really needed the app the day before and hadn't had it).

This really shows some of the strength of the place, a huge piece in a dynamic environment. Really cool.

The museum has free wi-fi and QR codes on the art labels linked to video and other pieces by the artist. I thought it was a very nice use of technology.